Digg/Buzz It Up

POLITICO 44

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor will kick off a personal drive Friday to rebrand the GOP as "a party that gets it” and would focus on spending — not ideology — if Republicans win a House majority in November.

“People are receptive to a message of responsible leadership,” he said in an interview in his Capitol suite. “They’re just pissed, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”

Cantor, who has occasionally gotten under President Barack Obama’s skin during leadership meetings at the White House, will take a few digs at him when unveiling his refreshed GOP message for the Detroit Economic Club, a prestigious forum visited by every sitting president since Richard Nixon.

“The president missed the opportunity to galvanize the entire nation behind him,” Cantor says in his prepared remarks. Referencing conservative complaints about excessive government intervention, he continues: “His agenda and his rhetoric have revived a discredited idea imploding before our eyes in Europe.”

As the No. 2 House Republican, Cantor, with his rising visibility, could antagonize his relations with the lower-key House minority leader, Ohio Rep. John Boehner. Cantor is not expected to challenge Boehner if Republicans win the majority. But he is biding his time in hopes of becoming speaker when Boehner retires.

As part of a survival strategy in a brutal political environment, Cantor has begun forcing votes that will put House Republicans repeatedly on record as favoring specific spending cuts, in an attempt at inoculation against attacks for opposing administration jobs bills.

“Right now, the public is so predisposed to doubt whatever Washington does,” he said. “So when you say a ‘jobs bill,’ that doesn’t mean what it used to. It’s spending more money.”

In this anti-Washington, anti-incumbent year, he said, members will be able to use the votes on cuts to “go home and claim, ‘I’m not a part of that, and here’s what I’ve done.’”

Cantor, 47, said Americans are so concerned about the size of government that “right now the tolerance for pain [from cuts] is much greater than it has been.”

Deliberately echoing YouTube, Cantor has created a YouCut section of his whip website, which lets visitors use text messages to vote on which of five “wasteful spending items” to cut.

The link went viral among conservatives, and 765,000 votes have been cast. The site gives Cantor a valuable database that allows him to e-mail more than 400,000 people in what he calls “the YouCut community.”

In a Thursday dispatch, he wrote: “The winning item this week was to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would generate over $30 billion in savings for the taxpayers. ... Click here to see where your representative stood on this week’s YouCut vote. ... P.S. The next five cuts are already up on the YouCut website. Click here to vote for your choice, and stay tuned for next week’s floor vote!”

Cantor said that as he was boarding a flight to New York at the Richmond airport Sunday, a man from Orlando, Fla., came up and said, “You’re the guy with YouCut!”

“We’ve been criticized: ‘It’s minor; these are little things.’ OK, fine, let’s do ’em,” Cantor said. “Look, we’re gonna get tough. We’re going to say ‘no’ to the people who have been so dominant in politics for so long. They’ve driven us off a cliff. ... The president’s numbers don’t add up — the modeling on these entitlement programs doesn’t add up.”

Readers' Comments (270)

I'd like to take Eric Cantor's anti-spending focus seriously, but looking back at the Bush administration & the GOP Congress that went along happily, right up until Bush became a political liability, tells me I simply can't take anything they say seriously any more.

“The White House won’t get what they want unless they do work with us,” he boasted

If a Democrat had said this, Eric Cantor would be blasting them from all angles for "excessive partisanship."

In fact, when Democrats tried to say stuff like this during the Bush years, they were openly accused of obstructionism -- which is almost certainly what they were guilty of, but that's another story. However, since they were arguably guilty of obstructionism for doing precisely what Cantor is saying above .... what's that say about the current minority GOP?

More importantly, how seriously can I take Cantor, when he makes a statement like that? Not very. To me, he's just another partisan political hypocrite. I wish all political parties & their partisans would disappear entirely; maybe then we can get this country back on its feet.

I want to refocus the American voters on all the wasteful spending the “conservative” Republicans engaged in while they were in power most recently, and how they’ve done it every single time they’ve held power.

"Yea, America, don't blame us Democrats for all that wasteful spending .... after all, we're just doing what Bush got away with for 8 years, only with a kinder, gentler face!"

I’d also like to refocus attention on the fact that despite signing Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, “conservative” Republican Eric Cantor voted FOR the largest tax rate increase in the history of the nation.all

First, Rep. Cantor needs to take some time to learn what responsible leadership is.

Rep. Cantor's party, with him in it, certainly did not provide anything like responsible leadership during the long years of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. In fact, all those folks did effectively was cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate and SPEND, SPEND, SPEND. Perhaps we should call the GOP the "cut taxes and spend our way into the red" party.

Actions do speak louder than words Rep. Cantor. It will take a long while to forget that the House Republican Bill to reform Wall Street prepared JUST LAST YEAR was reform absolutely NOTHING.

IIRC, those big AIG bonuses were only possible because of taxpayer-funded bailouts of an arguably criminal corporate board. In a context like that, taxing their bonuses is not quite the same as raising taxes on millions of American workers.

Frankly, I hate large tax increases, but I see nothing wrong with skinning AIG executives until every last penny they've been given has been returned. IMO, they're lucky they got bailouts, instead of prison stripes.